So, Mr. Limbaugh; you didn’t enjoy your drive of our 2011 Car of the Year, the Chevrolet Volt? Assuming you’ve been anywhere near the biggest automotive technological breakthrough since … I don’t know, maybe the self-starter, could you even find your way to the front seat? Or are you happy attacking a car that you’ve never even seen in person?

Last time you ranted about the Volt, you got confused about the “range,” and said on the air that the car could be driven no more than 40 miles at a time, period. At least you stayed away from that issue this time, but you continue to attack it as the car only a tree hugging, Obama-supporting Government Motors customer would want. As radio loudmouths like you would note, none of those potential customers were to be found after November 2.

Back to us for a moment, our credibility, Mr. Limbaugh, comes from actually driving and testing the car, and understanding its advanced technology. It comes from driving and testing virtually every new car sold, and from doing this once a year with all the all-new or significantly improved models all at the same time. We test, make judgments and write about things we understand.

This is another of your distortions, Rush, repeated by the otherwise more level-headed George Will in The Washington Post last Sunday. The $7,500 Obama tax credit is an expansion of President Bush’s hybrid credits from the last decade. The Obama tax credit extends to the new Nissan Leaf, too, but if you or Will slammed that car, I’ve not heard or read it. I’d be surprised if you did, though, as Nissan is building the Leaf in a non-union factory in a right-to-work state represented by two Republican senators. A factory located there because Tennessee offered Nissan big tax credits. Maybe you’re worried that if the $7,500 tax credit works, too many people will buy the Volt, and that could reduce the need for oil drilling tax credits?

I don't think that this Althouse clip wasn't a very good pitch. I doubt that it will tempt Elrushbo.

He doesn't want to engage an uppity gal in a conversation about the political correctness of "sissy" and "chickification."

The Althouse pitch should have been more focused on praising the big man. Sure, she claimed to listen to every show. But, that was a defensive gesture to counter Rush's disappointment resulting from her piss poor understanding of where Rush is coming from. She probably dug the hole even deeper: what sort of true fan could listen everyday, and still not understand where Rush was coming from.

Althouse should have had more sucking up, and less feminazi/metronazi whining.

I didn't hear Rush on this matter, but if he called Assange a "sissy" I would have to agree. I am so sick of woosified little men who think themselves either of relevance or importance. As an attorney I personally will welcome the day when masculine men, who protect our country and its citizens, are again held up as role models for our sons and examples of manliness to our daughters.

You’ve made two king’s ransoms by convincing legions of dittoheads to tune into you every day. I wonder, do you ever ride in anything that’s not German or Anglo-Saxon? Do you have any idea how powerful IG Metal is, and of the size of Germany’s social safety net?

Sissy is a category that has evolved. First it meant boys who were afraid to do something. Next it meant any effeminate actions. Next it meant a male gay person that played the female role. Finally it seems to means an apparently brave contrarian challenging the most dangerous people on earth. I again wonder if the US put him up to this. The professor's point is a take off against calling 98 pound weaklings sissys...but just wait until Charles Atlas's dynamic resistance system takes effect.

If you can stop shilling for your favorite political party long enough to go for a drive, you might really enjoy the Chevy Volt. I’m sure GM would be happy to lend you one for the weekend. Just remember: driving and Oxycontin don’t mix.

One of my many self-assigned jobs for which I am embarrassingly way WAY overpaid is that of catching typo's in Althouse posts before they can be repeated in the blogosphere, or, in this case, read over the air by the El Rushbo himself.

Cleaning and oiling my gun is no excuse. Nor is truing the wheels on my mountain bike. Everyone knows I reshingled the roof, butchered the hog, and plowed the back forty LAST month, so those excuses won't wash either. Drat.

Guess all I can do is, well, MAN UP! And then I'll just redouble my prodigious efforts.

When Rush talks about the chickification of our world or of America he is only insulting women if you deny that there are destructive chick traits, destructive of an ideal society ala Rush. Example: chicks are risk averse and security prone, moreso than men. It follows that a chickified society will be a society that chips away at freedom/risk taking/competition/hierarchy in the name of consensus/safety/compassion/equality. As ours does.

As for men who aren't physically imposing... well I don't know that "masculine" is the same thing as "physically imposing." Consider, oh, the actor Jackie Earle Haley. He's a scrawny little guy. Look at the characters he's played recently; Rorschach and then Guerrero on the show Human Target. Someone physically *imposing* probably couldn't pull it off if he tried.

Julian Assange isn't *small* is he? I never thought he was small, just colorless. Milky. Smooth.

And what he's doing is this sort of public theater that is all about how courageous he is, how brave, how robust.

The choices of insult is probably defined by that as much as anything else.

Excellent example, Synova! I still love Jackie Earl Haley from Breaking Away and the moment he decides to "punch the clock" out of working class, townie anger, is another illustration of how perfect he is as a pocket-sized macho guy.

You have to throw left-handed to make a dog video of the resulting chase-down.

The camera only works right-handed.

I don't think Rush would be into bloggingheads, as it's off his format.

I fact he usually sucks with caller dialog, and those are screened, because they pull him off his bigger-than-life riff; which, remember, is played for laughs at his own expense.

His deep background is being a prankster. Politicians and the welfare state are fertile material, and it happens to be the material the media have been living off of for decades. That makes it grand entertainment that it's all finally cleared away in ridicule.

Against Althouse there's nothing to undermine.

Althouse doesn't think his undermining of Wikileaks was appropriate. The real situation is that it wasn't funny, that is, it wasn't up to his usual prankster standards.

Julian Assange is a hero to me... and to many others! Who else is going to promote honesty and transparency in government? You know... forcing governments to tell the truth and not just spew out market-tested garbage that they think will help them in the polls.

That, in fact, is the bottom line: That the folks in our government care more about the polls and maintaining power than the good of our country. Julian Assange is calling them on this, and that's primarily why they hate him (and are now talking about his extrajudicial assassination!).

And there's nothing more disturbing than the leading anti-Establishment conservatives acting like schoolyard bullies and taunting people they don't like because of their "girlieness"... Interesting to watch Althouse in bully-mode. You're sort of used to it from Rush, but not from the Professor. Tsk tsk.

I think there's an amount of jealousy here. Assange is getting attention and promoting a message that is resonating with people-- especially young, technically-inclined people-- and the old fogies just can't stand it. It's the new generational warfare.

Thank you Ann. I really appreciate what you said...and by the way, Assange has been accused of rape by at least two women so it would seem to me that in Rush's view of things that should get him off the sissy list.

I have to admit that I often agree with Rush, but all this chickification stuff just sort of annoys me.

Julius, I'm not too worried about this last bit of Assange Theater, but the Afghan war stuff got people dead. What he released on his own authority, because he's just so damn righteous, got real people really dead.

Granted, they were just quaint little brown villagers, so no one really cares about that.

Also, unlike the people Plame's "outing" supposedly put at risk, we *know* the names of real people who's only defense was anonymity who were targeted and killed because Assange felt it prudent on his authority to decide to release their names publicly and make them targets of the Taliban.

Asange (yes, I dropped an 's' in the event filtering thinks it's profanity), is effete. It's not his size (according to Forbes' interviewer, he's 6'2") it's his passive, bitchy manner. He doesn't *do* anything and he's not *doing* it for any reason other than no reason.

Reminds me of the three nihilists that jumped Lebowski and Carl in the bowling parking lot.

On the other hand, he is *not* "taking on the most dangerous government" in the world. I would love to see Nork, ChiCom, Sudan, Zimbabwae and others exposed.

But the fact remains he's not "taking on" anyone. He runs around the world, "fleeing" the least harmful country in the world, flouncing his skirt with red-faced haughtiness. He's a gossip collector, sorter, and publisher and his reason is only... what? Some limp-wristed, lisping mumble about information wanting to be free.

I think Rush nailed it--he's good, you know, with memorable, instant labels. I think the repetition was him trying it on for size. I think he would've gone right for 'fairy' if it didn't have sexual connotations.

Think, for a moment, of another quick tag for Julian? Tattle-tale? Not funny. Powder? Too obscure, but the right direction.Man, 'sissy' just nails it.

Now, separate the man from the action.

The release of this information (and I hope there's more and it's not focused on the US) is exactly what we need. It reminded me of Soltzhenitsyn's comment (after assuredly misspelling his name, now I'll paraphrase) that when the secret policy entered the apartment building, he hid behind his door, listening to the boots tramp through the hallways, praying they wouldn't stop at his... when they left, pulling a protesting innocent from his home, the remainders breathed a sigh of relief. "What would've happened," he asks, "if we met the police with axe handles and pans and beat them the first time?"

Releases like these, not only hurt our good national efforts but they also have the positive effect of keeping our government honest and -- hey -- wasn't Obama's theme transparency?

And, I'm guessing that the big guy would see that Althouse was positively beaming when he read her words. And, her glee runs wild when he says "Well, I did, Ann..." As soon as she hears the direct reference her devotion becomes obvious.

"One revelation: China was fine with a reunified Korea. That won’t please the North, who are already lobbing rockets at the South. By dumping those cables, Wikileaks just changed history, instigated war, and doomed peace."

Of course... Koreans are also quaint brown people so if Assange really did reveal this and it really does destabilize an already unstable North Korea, it's only nameless, faceless brown people who die so...

No problem.

Hm?

You know... we VOTE on who we want to be in charge of this sort of information. I don't recall ever voting for Julian Assange.

Assange being accused of rape doesn't make him manly. It makes him more of a sneak and a coward.

Yes, I do think Ann threw El Rushbo for a loop. In the old Bengal Lancer movies, what he was doing at the end of the clip used to be known as faffling. Character actors like C Aubrey Smith, Nigel Bruce, and Sebastian Cabot made careers out of it.

In the lexical sense, sissy means several things, not the least of which is being willing to stand in the open and fight your fights "like a man" - something the Lefties have been denigrating for years. So El Rushbo has a point, but Ann got the better of him here. Not being a big guy myself, I learned a long time ago, when you have to fight, find something to even the odds - heavy, blunt instruments work well.

AlphaLiberal said...

No doubt Limbaugh is offended at the "sissy" notion of not polluting. In Windbag's world, real men pollute!

Yes, we've seen how the Lefties don't pollute.

deborah said...

Just listened. Brava, Althouse, brava!

I'm fed up with phrases like 'throws like a girl' and 'crying like a little girl.'

Ladies, it's a guy thing. Much as I despise the phrase, all I can say is, "Live with it".

Alpha Liberal advances the progressive trend to demean people with addictions

After what Limbaugh said about Kurt Cobain and Jerry Garcia after they died, and all the other hypocritical bullshit Limbaugh has said of drug use in general, I feel zero empathy for the guy. Limbaugh said drug use is a choice, and he made the choice to meet his maid in the parking lot of Denny's to trade cigar boxes full of cash in exchange for thousands of illegal pain pills.

He raped one or two women in Sweden, apparently, according to Greta on Fox last night.

A sissy wouldn't do that. A psychopath, or a bully, might do that.

At any rate, I think Rush and you are right to hate this Assonge guy, but I prefer the term "weasel," except it's somewhat offensive to weasels to link this creep with an animal that doesn't choose its moral behavior.

They were talking about whether he could be gotten on treason, and the answer was no, since he isn't an American citizen. Why not just get him on the rape charges?

When they wanted Capone, they went after his tax records. This guy is vulnerable on the rape charges, so prosecute on those grounds.

I think El Rushbo is as confounded by the Professor's circular reasoning skills as we can be at times. Yet she always makes her point in the end. It's that you have to listen to it all before starting to reply to where you guess she's going with this. Good luck Rush.

You did have him at a loss for words! Which indicates to me he was thinking, not just reacting or entertaining the audience. I liked hearing that happen, because it reflects a form of respect where business as usual and defensiveness stops for a "maybe, what if? why not?" kind of thought.

I enjoyed hearing him read through the comment, allowing Althouse's words to stand and be heard before adding his response.

Prof. Althouse, IMHO, you're taking Rush much more seriously than he intends. Notwithstanding your laugh at him allegedly being at a loss for words (a lawyerly thing?), it makes you look like you don't have a sense of humor, which some people will find funny. My unsolicited advice to you: consider dropping your attention to this incident.

Rush has a headset made specifically for cochlear implants. Before the implants, he did have a real-time transcriptionist. Between the change in his pronunciation, and the delay between the caller's words and his response, it was obvious something wasn't right. He's back to his old talker form now.

"He doesn't want to engage an uppity gal in a conversation about the political correctness of "sissy" and "chickification." "

Is he a sissy? Is he chick(en)?

I don't think it's that so much as he's a bit too high rent for blogging heads. The other commenters are great,of course (with a few exceptions) but Rush is the king of radio, and to hobnob with the common folks would be beneath him. It would be like Louis Armstrong jamming with the guy on the subway playing trumpet for change (ok, Bloggingheads isn't that low rent!)Also is there anything to even argue about? Everyone knows that the world and in particular, guys, have listened to women so much and bent backwards so much to not be chauvanists and not appear like brutes that they've started growing breasts and ovulating. THey're turning into pussies. It's not that he'd have a problem debating his point, but rather, it's so beyond debate that it's not worthy of engagement.

Make it a fair fight and properly address the underlying kernel of truth in Rush's monolog by discussing the topic on Bloggingheads with Harvey Mansfield. Chickification is the other side of the Maniliness coin. Are you Man (or Chick?) enough to tackle the subject with Mansfield?

Doesn't Assange look like one of the guys from Queer Eye For the Straight guy? don't know their names, but there's one particularly effeminate one with grayish blond hair and Assange could be his brother. And that guy isn't as much of a sissy either.

If Rush is smart, by taking you up on your offer, he will be able to surmount this problem. If he doesn't, he is drawing a bright line that will impede the support of independents center and left of center who have thrown their weight to his arguments in the past.

The task is to disengage the stereotype of a fey person from a stereotype of one who lacks courage.

I heard Rush talking about you today -- only I came in seconds after he said 'Althouse' so I didn't know it was you. Being a 40 something engineer and mom of 4 girls, I get somewhat miffed at Rush's comments about women sometimes - but when it comes to 'chickification' I mostly agree with him - we are all becoming wussies. I disagree that it comes from women though - my pioneer female ancestors were anything but wussies. I think he should stick with 'wussification'.

I'd love to see Rush on Bloggingheads - but I don't think it's going to happen -- no profit for him in it.

Synova - "Of course... Koreans are also quaint brown people so if Assange really did reveal this and it really does destabilize an already unstable North Korea, it's only nameless, faceless brown people who die so..."======================

Koreans are not "brown people" anymore than Japanese are.

They have higher IQs than most whites and their historical feat has been to maintain a high degree of autonomy and resist assimilation by either the Han Race and Yamoto Race. That is impressive.

The term "brown people" is exceptionally sloppy. Arabs are as white as we are, if closer to Jews than other whites in ethnicity. Iran means "Aryan".

A good deal of the population of Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka have Aryan background. And calling a white Mexican or Cuban or Chilean a "brown person" is ridiculous.

In fact, the idea of a "hispanic race" and "Pacific Islander" as an ethnicity - was garbage cooked up by two lawyers in the Nixon Administration trying to cook up EEO-1.

The Human Genome Project is tracing ancient and current DNA groups and who came from where and who ended up where currently living people are is fascinating stuff.(Even as Japs learn there is no such thing as a true Yamoto Race, and true ME Jews learn their closest relatives are their Palestinian, Syrian, and Lebanese "cousins" (be they Chistian or Muslim) - and unmixed racially blacks - learn they missed two key brain mutations that most whites and Asians carry)

As long as you're clear that there are also plenty of reasons to associate men with weakness and women with strength, we're in agreement.

I think you meant that women are the weak ones.

Feminism, far from helping women, has actually forced women to enter situations where their inherent inferiority is exposed wide open.

There are many aspects of female inferiority that would never have been exposed had feminism not forced women into roles they were ill-suited for.

Suppose a 10-year-old is doing well in his 5th-grade class. Quick! Let's send him to college!! After he fails miserably and gets demoralized, you have exactly the same situation feminism has forced women into.

Dr. Helen writes about this all the time. I suspect that Ann and Dr. Helen would not remain cordial with each other for very long if the subject of misandry came up.

Oh... c'mon Ann... Call Rush tomorrow and they'll put you right through. He probably already sent you an e'mail on this. His point was to offer affront to political correctness. It's like when I'm around my strongest and most self-assured women-friends I like to bring up repealing the 19th amendment (it sets them off into a fabulous tirade).

It's banter... it's the adult version tugging the hair of your crush in grade school.

Now stop being so logical and give it back to him rather than trying to be above the fray. lol

Why in the world are so many of us engaged with Althouse talking about Limbaugh talking about Assange being a "sissy"?

Is it because Limbaugh decided to talk about our hostess, Althouse?

Is it that we all like Althouse, and we know how happy she is that a conversation about Wikileaks has turned into a discussion that appears to be about and between Althouse and Limbaugh? *while we all watch*

Wikileaks latest information dump was a BIG deal to American international relations, but, as long as Althouse got her super-oxygenated air from Limbaugh...Maybe we assume she will have even more strength to lead us all into a discussion about...

I find it funny how Rush and Anne sound so much alike. Love them both, but I get from all this a distinct sense of condescending, lecturing, self-righteous, self-regarding pedants arguing over nothing.

Surely that creep, Assange, deserves our scorn whether you call him a sissy or a terrorist matters little. It's bringing him down that matters, not defending your precious egos kids.

You have a good point regarding Limbaugh's use of feminine imagery to describe Assange's behavior. It says more about Limbaugh than it does about Assange. (And Assange's behavior is, so far as I'm concerned, indefensible.)

But, Ann, it strikes me as strange that a person as intelligent and accomplished as you feels the need to post a video of yourself listening to Rush Limbaugh talk about you on his radio show. I suppose that it's another example of your "blogging as performance art" genre. But it's so disturbingly "Two Virgins."

I"d put Assangel more in the poor man's Chomsky category. Like a ballsy Robert Cook wiht more Columbine-like rage.

He's got a few ideals, and he fires away at the U.S. for not meeting them (in Assangel's case quite recklessly...with potential loss of life...more like a glorified hacker). Chomsky is partly an anarchist, and a philosophical idealist.

Rush Limbaugh, apparently, has different standards for men and women. He might, like many conservatives, believe that there are fundamental differences between the sexes which makes neither sex inferior. These are matters of character and behavior, not physical characteristics. Audie Murphy was small man, but no one doubted his bravery, honor, patriotism or his self sacrifice toward the greater good.

If Rush calls a man out as being womanly or a sissy, he is not insulting women. Rush is saying that the man is not living up to his social role.

We could discuss that social rile and its necessity. We could go back to Plato’s classification of people into Wolves, Sheep and Sheep dogs.

It is unclear to me if Assange is a Wolf or the most cowardly and confused kind of Sheep. Rush is guessing at the latter. He would probable say that Assange is over civilized and over protected in that he has no understanding of how dangerous human Wolves are. That Assange is playing a game far beyond his competence to handle.

In short, Rush’s comments were not about you females. It was a mistake to be so sensitives.

We men are often crude because life is rough, dangerous and deadly. The right kind of civilized man wants to protect the innocent from those hard facts of life. Assange is damaging the framework which keeps him and us from being harmed. He places himself on the side of the wolves, although the wolves would savage him in an instant.

Him being a "sissy" really has nothing to do with. Rush just hates what he did, and wants to attack. I understand completely. It's just appropriate anger combined with helplessness to affect what a truly evil little twerp has done.

"But, Ann, it strikes me as strange that a person as intelligent and accomplished as you feels the need to post a video of yourself listening to Rush Limbaugh talk about you on his radio show. I suppose that it's another example of your "blogging as performance art" genre. But it's so disturbingly "Two Virgins.""

It was a way to put the audio up. I didn't have the transcript yet. (That goes up later.) And I don't have a way of posting just audio on the blog. I realized that I could do it with video and get an effect pretty similar to what Rush gets when he plays audio clips and talks. The video is like his use of the webcam which is available to subscribers at his website.

Mainly, it was a way of listening to the material when I didn't have a written text and getting it up on the blog with my response.

But I thought it was also amusingly "meta" as deborah said in the second comment. It's funny that he said something, which I talked about, which he talked about, which I talked about. Very bloggy and new media, and that amusese me as a performance artist.

I was being very sarcastic because it just pisses me off so much when the "caring class" treat people in other nations, particularly "non-Western" nations, as non-existent. I was not trying to express accurate genetic information but was making fun (in a serious way) of a repulsive attitude.

I love Rush and I really like you Ann but you voted for the One. I still like you. Rush is right about the chickification of our culture and I see it every day with those younger than 40. I shake my head when I see how wimpy these guys are.

Hey, did you listen to Rush prior to 2008? I can't imagine you did and still have voted for the One.

Heck Ann, if Rush won't debate you, I'd be happy to. Of course I'm no experienced legal-eagle or college professor (although I have taught Intro to Computers in years gone by), I am a Computer Engineer, have owned my own business for the past 28 years, am a retired AF/IANG officer, a Vietnam vet and I grew up in an era when men were still men rather than the many candy-asses I see running around today. I find it odd that the idea our boys and young men (hell, I know any number in their 30s) are being chickified is even being debated when it is so apparent.

I thought this idea of a video of Ann listening to Rush talk about Ann was lame, but when I watched and listened, it was excellent. Ann made some terrific points, and Rush should engage her in some fashion.

Must disagree with your contenntion that by insulting Assange via comparing him to women, Rish is thereby insulting women. Incorrect. Rush is [rightly] insulting men who are similar to women. Women are allowed to be womanly - that's no insult, it's a compliment. And men are allowed to be manly. The problem is when one sex takes on the attributes of the other.

One could only see his comments as insulting if one thinks there are no distinctions between the sexes. But that cuts right to the core of what Rush calls the "chickification" of the country.

Ms Althouse you think way to highly of yourself, Rush LImbaugh is not going to waste another moment of his time on you, today was it, he responded and it is over. Now move along chick and go back to your job, whatever that is. OBTW as a woman, this Country has indeed been feminized in ways that have hurt little boys and that wimp who released classified documents is proof it is happening world wide!

Urban Bard has it right, methinks. In addition, Rush's tagline of 'Annoying the Left' would at least partially explain his use of the word 'sissy'. Not to insult women, but, to drive the PC crowd to leap and contort to the conclusion that it does insult women.

Oh, and the gratuitous comments with regard to cars and painkillers is sophomoric (not that there is anything wrong with being a sophomore, it is after all one step above being a lowly freshman :)

Rush's use of the term sissy in hardly new. He has rightly pointed out the feminization of American men for a long time. Rush knows men and women are different. The feminist attempts over the last 45 years to homoginize men and women would be tragic if it were successful. It is the differences between men and women that make our relationships grand and subsequently insure the continuance of our species.

That Assange is targeted as a sissy by Rush no way is a negative on women. It's merely a slap at Assange.

Alphadipshit...If the Nissan Leaf was produced by Government Motors, used Obama as a pitchman and was promoted as the Car of The Year by a leftist rag I'm sure Limbaugh would have mocked it too.

Althouse, get real, we know that women are more risk adverse than men and that is why we call weak cowardly men sissies, pussies, whatever. I agree with Rush about the chickification of our country. I blame all this political correction on chickification of our country, government, whatever.

Ages ago, when a village was attacked by outsiders, It was expected that all those who were incapable of fighting would flee. The most capable of the women and the elderly would shepherd the young and the feeble to safety. This task was considered no less vital than those who stood ready to die defending their people.

Any physically able male who fled with the women was considered “womanly or a sissy.” Any woman who stayed to fight would be considered exceptional, even if there was little she had the strength to do.

A villager who would lead the attackers in bypassing the village defenses would be considered an abomination. Assange gives “aid and comfort” to the enemies of civilization. Calling him womanly or a sissy is too kind. He is politically motivated scum.

Ann, you'll know you have habitation rights in Rush's cranium if you hear his building superintendent, Mark Levin, on the radio some night telling you to get off the lawn or he's going to call the cops.